Man held with 104 'questionable' passports

A man in the Philippines carrying 104 ‘‘questionable’’ Malaysian passports, 57,000 US dollars in cash and a mobile phone with ‘‘Osama bin Laden’’ displayed on it was today arrested at Manila’s international airport, officials said.

Kuala Lumpur travel agent Azmi bin Salleh was arrested by police at Ninoy Aquino International Airport as he prepared to board a Kuwait Airlines flight to Kuwait with a stopover in Bangkok, a report by Aviation Security chief Brigadier General Marcelo Ele Jr said. He was being questioned.

The report said bin Salleh was carrying a map of Afghanistan and had a mobile phone with the name Osama bin Laden displayed on the screen, but police had no immediate evidence to connect him to the al-Qaida network.

Philippine police have been on heightened alert, particularly at international airports, since the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Last month, police arrested Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, described as a key leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah, a group linked to al-Qaida that authorities believe maintains terrorist cells in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Al-Ghozi, identified as an Indonesian, gave information that led to the discovery last month of more than a ton of TNT buried in the backyard of a house in the southern Philippines.